Adobe today launched new versions of applications in Creative Cloud, including Premiere Pro, After Effects, Media Encoder, Audition and Photoshop.

As we previously reported, chief among the new features are new capabilities in Premiere's Lumetri Color Panel (including HSL secondaries), performance enhancements in After Effects, and improvements to the ever-intriguing Character Animator. (That latter is still officially a "preview" release, which seems odd for software that's already been used to generate several minutes of live prime-time programming for a major television network.) Audition now includes some options giving editors access to useful combinations of filters and effects without requiring them to tune the stacks from scratch, and Media Encoder comes into play as part of an end-to-end refinement to queueing, rendering and proxy workflow.

One thing to be careful of — Adobe says that projects saved in v2015.3 of its applications cannot be opened in earlier versions. So if you think you may need to open current projects on systems running earlier versions of Creative Cloud apps for some reason, this might be an update you want to skip until you're sure all of the workstations you use are on the same page.

The downloads are available through your desktop Creative Cloud app. Here's a video with Adobe's Dave Helmly introducing the new features in Premiere Pro, followed by Adobe's official what's-new indexes for both Premiere Pro and After Effects. 

Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Performance optimizations

  • Apple Metal GPU supported by Mercury Playback Engine (Initial support – some effects not currently supported)
  • Native decode (i.e. no QuickTime installation required) on Windows of Apple ProRes
  • Improvements to MorphCut face detection and tracking
  • H264 playback GPU acceleration (Windows platform with Intel IRIS chipsets only)

Enhancements to the editing experience

  • Import, edit, and create Open Captions (subtitles), including options for font, size, position, color, weight, background color and background opacity
  • In-application licensing of Adobe Stock assets from Project Panel or Timeline
  • New badge in Project Panel for unlicensed stock assets
  • Support for Arabic and Hebrew languages in the Titler
  • Timeline auto scroll when range selecting
  • See more tracks at once with smaller minimum timeline height
  • Remove Attributes to remove individual effects from clips
  • Newly assignable keyboard shortcuts:

    • Add/remove a keyframe in the Effect Control Panel
    • Nudge keyframe left or right by one frame
    • Select next/previous keyframe
    • Increase/decrease keyframe value
    • Constrain Direct Manipulation horizontally or vertically while dragging
    • Toggle timeline zoom to single frame level
  • Twirl state of intrinsic effects shared between all clips in Effect Control Panel is remembered
  • Twirl state of parameters in Export Settings dialog is remembered
  • Show all clip markers in a sequence in the Markers panel
  • Filter markers in the Marker panel by color
  • Frame count offset updates dynamically while trimming with the mouse
  • FCP XML time remapping (speed ramps) support
  • Adjust multiple clips’ field options simultaneously
  • Create dedicated folders for each Scratch Disk file Premiere generates
  • Multiple fixes to known issues with voice-over recording using Mercury Transmit

New and improved format support

  • AS-10 export
  • Direct export to XDCAM HD disc
  • HEVC 10-bit export
  • Improvements to J2K export (24p and 30p now supported)
  • Panasonic AVC-LongG export
  • RED Weapon 8K, RED Raven support
  • QT XDCAM HD to MXF XDCAM HD Smart Rendering
  • ‘Sony device compatibility’ checkbox added to XAVC export settings
  • Match Source controls for still image formats
  • Create separate mono channels for DNxHD exports

Source: blogs.adobe.com

Adobe After Effects CC

  • Enhanced video and audio playback: After Effects CC 2015 (13.8) uses a new playback architecture to deliver real-time playback of cached frames with synced audio. The new architecture is shared with other Adobe applications, like Premiere Pro and Audition.
  • Effect rendering on the GPU: The Lumetri Color, Gaussian Blur, and Sharpen effects can now render using your computer’s GPU. This improves rendering performance for these effects by 2x-4x over rendering using only the CPU (depending on the frame being rendered and the speed of your GPU). GPU effect rendering is controlled via the new Video Rendering and Effects option in the Project Settings dialog.
  • Performance improvements: Many small changes under the hood include faster import and caching of image sequences, asynchronous drawing of viewer panels, faster opening of large projects, improved expression caching, and more.
  • Additional native format support: Apple ProRes QuickTime files can be decoded on Windows without needing QuickTime installed on the system. RED camera raw file decoding now supports RED Scarlet-W, Raven, and Weapon cameras, including 8K .r3d footage.
  • Lumetri Color effect improvements: The Lumetri Color effect can now render using your computer’s GPU, and includes new HSL Secondary controls and new SpeedLooks presets.
  • Gaussian Blur effect improvements: The Gaussian Blur effect has been updated to a new version. The Repeat Edge Pixels option from the Fast Blur effect has been added, and the effect can now render using your computer’s GPU. This version of Gaussian Blur replaces both the previous Gaussian Blur (Legacy) effect and the Fast Blur effect, which are still available but have been moved to the Obsolete category.
  • Add compositions to Adobe Media Encoder with render settings: You can now send compositions from the Render Queue to the Adobe Media Encoder queue with the options you choose in the Render Settings dialog. When you click the new Queue in AME button in the Render Queue panel, queued render  items are added to Adobe Media Encoder. Compositions will be rendered by Adobe Media Encoder with the render settings you chose in After Effects.
  • Read-only collaboration with Creative Cloud libraries: Assets in Creative Cloud libraries can be set to read-only, so they can be shared but not changed or deleted.
  • Libraries panel improvements: The new Libraries workspace makes it easier to search and add assets to your project. Find the right content fast using filtered search for Adobe Stock, display of length and format for Stock video, and links to video previews.
  • Scroll panel tabs using the Hand tool: When a panel group has more tabs than you can see at once, you can now scroll the tabs by panning with the Hand tool. For example, hold the spacebar key to activate the Hand tool, then click in the tab well and drag left or right, the same way you would to pan in the Composition panel.
  • Maxon CINEWARE 3.1: The latest version of Maxon’s CINEWARE plug-in includes bug fixes, enhanced OpenGL rendering, and scene coordinate matching.
  • Maxon Cinema 4D Exporter: The Maxon Cinema 4D Exporter now exports animated 3D text and shape layers into the .c4d file. 3D text layers can be exported as extruded spline objects that retain animation fidelity, or as extruded text objects that preserve the ability to edit the text in Cinema 4D.
  • And even more: Many additional small improvements, such as a Swap Colors button in the Tint effect, refinements to project auto-save, and many bug fixes.

Source: blogs.adobe.com

More details on all of the application updates are available at the Creative Cloud blog.

Adobe: www.adobe.com